Counting Bruises
by Lost Dove
Summary: She counts her bruises; she cherishes them. SaraGrissom angst.


Counting Bruises  
  
The glow from his office always reaches the threshold of where she sits. She stares at it and the way it stains the dark of the room, permeated from within only by the glow of the computer screen to which she pays no attention. She knows she should leave. There is never any doubt about that.  
  
She finds things to do, and when she does them she is consumed by efficiency, by the need to find and fit together the pieces of the puzzle. Her thought drowns out any remembrance, any lingering, all those things she should be free from. But then the case is closed, the day ends, doors close, and she is left with what she tries to deny. Which all revolves around that light that laps at the door.  
  
She used to be sure of things, and she used to wake up every morning knowing her direction, her path, her job. She feels stilted now, and stunted by her own emotions, crippled by the feelings that won't give her respite. It's hard to feel whole when all you want, you can never have. When she looks at him, her world gets smaller. It should crush her but instead she only shrinks. Sometimes she feels as if she's breathing but nobody can hear her; every blink of the eye turns the world greyer than before. She's living in the aftershock of her own explosion.  
  
He thinks she wants love. No, she doesn't know what he thinks. Maybe he thinks she's grasping out for affection, wanting to find it in the protective figure in her life, who's given her reassuring words more than once, soothing her with truthful balm. She's not that far gone, not yet: she doesn't think she'll ever be, either. She hasn't been led to this powerless room in her mind because she wants any kind of affection, needy and reaching out in the dark. She's here because she wants him - because she doesn't want to imagine her future without him, though she knows it will never contain him, because now that she knows him, she loves him. She doesn't need him for love, in some twisted selfish way, but she needs his love.  
  
She sees him look at her sometimes, when he catches her looking at him and she quickly smiles her forced smile that indents harshly both sides of her face, filled with necessity and unspoken words. He'll glance at Nick, or Warrick after that, and how he underestimates her - she can read him better than he thinks. He wonders why she fixates her emotions on him, why not instead the younger, the attractive colleagues she works with everyday. This stings because she doesn't want to believe that he could think so little of her and what she feels for him, so demean her destruction that she cradles.  
  
All day, all she ever looks for is clues. All she ever hears from him is that the evidence doesn't lie, listen to what the evidence says, don't let other things get in the way. So when what she thinks are clues stare her in the face, what can she do but interpret them, trying to glean from them the things that she seeks? She trusts enough in herself to believe that she doesn't imagine them, but there are times that come in the aching early morning where shadows paint the ceiling of her room when she wonders if she is losing control of what is real and what is not. Maybe everything is nothing and she should logically let this entire tall tower within her heart collapse into fragments of air. She lines each brick up in her mind and tries to topple them over, one by one, eliminating and discounting. She tries to pull out the shards that he's embedded in her. The only thing is, they're splinters that she cherishes.  
  
She still has the potted plant. It sits in her room, on the sill of a window that looks out onto the sunrise. Every morning she waters it, watching the water split the air like liquid lightning. She's drawing ultimatums with herself, placing boundaries and last chances. She knows it can't go on like this forever. She can't let it. She worries sometimes that she'll never end it. She's always been able to move on before. The potted plant is still unbearably green for her.  
  
The day the lab exploded. She felt suddenly the weight of everything: bearing down on her, all the unresolved feelings that hung over her and dwelled inside her like undiscovered countries. He walked towards her, and she was torn apart by his being the last person she needed to see and yet what she needed most. What else can she do but long for something, anything to do with him? It makes her nearly numb - only nearly. Then words slip out of his mouth that make her feel as if she conjured them up, and she stops for a moment to try to remember if he did say it, or if she only wished in a small sigh inside her mind. There's times when she swears that look in his eyes isn't just the concern of a close companion. She can't throw these moments away, even when the next moment all that his glance conveys to her is detached confusion.  
  
Maybe he doesn't even see her as a friend. He doesn't turn to her when he needs help, there resides in her no refuge of friendly care that he ever leans upon. They work, sometimes closer than the space between one breath and the other, but what is beyond that? He didn't tell her when he went in for his operation, she didn't even know, and when he returned, cured and changed and different, she felt suddenly the ground beneath her fall away, leaving her holding on to something that wasn't holding on to her.  
  
It's not as if she hasn't made herself clear. She's clenched her teeth, hardened her nerve, and spoke words that can't be misinterpreted. She tries to make it sound slightly offhand, as if as much of herself doesn't depend on the answer as it really does. She's let fall into the air a question that could lead to the place she thinks about. He looked at her; he paused; he acted as if there was a bomb between them that would go off if they came too close. For her, it's already been set off. He didn't know what to do about it: now she doesn't either. She can't be content with wiping chalk off his face.  
  
She doesn't think she would be a `diversion` for him. She thinks she knows him that well, at least. The only explanation she finds for those expressions on his face when she hands to him her emotions written simply is the one she can't help hoping for. She wants to tear down the wall that's planted there in front of her, behind which she imagines so much, but it's erected as firmly as are his pillars of knowledge. He won't let her break through, and she's slammed herself against it until she feels battered and broken in soul. She keeps hoping if she says it one more time, he'll do more than look at her.  
  
She's impotent and she's helpless, and she's pinned down by needing him. If only she could make herself get away, and if only he wouldn't let her.  
  
When she gets up, her steps are like beats in the staccato rhythm of her aching heart. She passes by his office and stands for only an instant in sheer raw yearning. He doesn't notice. So she walks through the doors and closes her eyes against everything.  
  
He always looks up too late. 


End file.
